


Someone We'll Never Know

by Schwoozie



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Avoidance, Conversations, Dinner Time, M/M, Mansion Fic, Pining, Realization, Self-Discovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-01
Updated: 2012-07-01
Packaged: 2017-11-08 23:27:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/448739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schwoozie/pseuds/Schwoozie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik has been missing dinner; Charles finally confronts him about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Someone We'll Never Know

Charles didn’t know if Erik knew that he had found where he disappeared to all those nights he didn't come to dinner. He would never fault the man for not trying—he had been there the first few nights at the mansion, reclining stiffly as Raven and Sean talked around him, eating like a starving man then sitting, brooding, tying the antique silverware into knots and fleeing before the dessert course.

Charles did not ask him for explanations; he hoped Erik understood that he was not bothered, not out of propriety at least, although it still stung his heart that Erik would not endure it even for him. Without really meaning to, in those few shared meals, they had taken the chairs Charles’s mother and father had frequented, before Father killed himself and Kurt evicted Charles from the dinner table, and for a short time he could pretend this marked some sort of premonition.

He pondered this as he took in the man, cresting sun gleaming off his golden chest and throwing shadows beneath his lowered eyelashes, tinted green and yellow by the wild grass it streamed through. For some reason or another, this tuck of land above the duck pond had been allowed to grow beyond the manicured perfection of the rest of the estate. It had its own, savage kind of beauty, he thought, much like the man currently ensconced, shirtless, in the tangled stalks, breath barely discernable against the fluttering reeds. A sparrow fluttered down to peck by Erik’s ear, but with a quick mental shove Charles sent it away.

“You do realize I know you are there?” came the rumbling, sonorous voice, a moment before Erik sat up on his elbows, looking at Charles with half-lidded eyes.

“Of course,” Charles lied, eyes on the way the roped scars danced across Erik’s torso as he sat up and stretched his long arms above his head, rolled his neck until the crack sounded across the lawn. “I did not want to disturb you if you did not want to be.”

“Whatever makes you think I would mind?”

“I assumed that if you wanted company you would be at dinner with the rest of us.” Charles picked up Erik’s shirt from where it had been flung. “I don’t begrudge you your privacy, Erik, but I wish you would attempt to be civil.”

“I thought that I was,” he said, grinning, standing, taking the shirt from Charles’s fingers, brushing his knuckles as he did so. “Letting you and the children eat in peace is the highest form of chivalry, I promise.”

“Don’t be trite, Erik. I want you there.”

“Of course you do, Charles.”

“Yes, Erik, of course,” Charles said, irritated, as Erik fastened his shirt with long fingers. The man raised a skeptical brow. “The dinner table is a time to come together and learn about each other. To talk about our days.”

“You know everything about my days, Charles, you plan them.”

“I didn’t know until tonight where you always run off to.”

Erik’s hands stilled several buttons from his collar, the black fabric hanging open across his defined throat. “Really?”

“Yes, really,” Charles said. “I didn’t want to be intrusive.”

“Of all things, you find _this_ intrusive?”

“You took such pains to be quiet about it.”

“Did I? I used the front door.”

Charles rolled his eyes. “Fine then. Please come in before nightfall, at least—it will be cold, and I don’t want you to fall in the dark.”

“Please, Charles,” Erik grinned at him, full teeth sparkling in the falling light. “I can survive without you holding my hand.”

“Yes, Erik.”

Charles turned and began walking back to the mansion when he was stayed by a large hand on his elbow. He stood, waiting for his face to regain some semblance of composure, the warmth lingering though his sweater, tightening and pulling him back. He turned, his heart in his throat. He did not expect to find Erik looking uncertain, bashful, maybe even ashamed, and he dropped Charles’s elbow to push his hands down his pockets.

“Yes, Erik?”

He was quiet a moment, then said, “I don’t belong there, Charles, surely you can see that.”

“I must admit that I don’t.”

“Oh, come on, Charles,” Erik said, taut brow flashing. “I have seen how the children act when I enter a room. I know when I’m not wanted.”

“Erik, it’s not that they don’t want you, that’s ridiculous—they don’t know you. You won’t let them.”

“They know all they need to,” Erik said stiffly, pulling his left arm closer to his body, feeling afresh, as he always did when he alluded to those days, the harsh sting of punching ink. Charles raised a hand, compelled, as always, to touch the abominable tattoo, run soft fingers over it as if to replace the burn with something clean.

 _Positive tactile sensations close the neural pathways to bodily sensations of pain; I wonder if it holds true for the mental. I would hope so. I would like to try._ But he hesitated, and brought it to his own neck instead, scratching awkwardly under his collar. Erik swallowed.

“I have not told them about your past, my friend,” Charles said softly. “It is not my tale to tell.”

Charles did not neglect the twinge of gratitude on Erik’s face, though if asked the man would never refer to it as such. But it was there; there it was.

“It doesn’t matter, Charles,” Erik said softly, looking away. “I’m better on my own.”

 _I don’t believe that,_ Charles thought. _I think you need people more than you realize. That is why it scares you so much. Once you start needing you’ll never stop. You’ll never want to._

 _Has anyone ever needed_ you _before?_

_I think I do. I think I need you very much._

But he did not voice it. The sun swam too brightly around his head to say it, the wind twisted too gently through his hair, the whispering grass too brittle and wild to catch the crush of colliding bodies.

Charles tried to recall the last woman he took to bed—Amy, or Emma, or maybe it was Karen—the sense of correctness he felt pumping into her, how he admired the sharp jut of her hip and cheekbones, how sweet and shy she had been, asking him to leave before her roommate returned. Her eyes had been brown, he remembered, a rather common variation but still lovely, constant and calming and not at all changeable, supremely preferable to irises that would stubbornly refuse a single shade, spinning between blue and green so Charles always felt the need to lean closer and discover what hue they truly were, and what lay behind them that must be kept so secret, with that shimmering veil to guard it…

Erik had closed his eyes in the minutes Charles thought, swaying silently as if preparing to take off with the wind. He cracked a lid open, and rolled his eyes to see Charles still standing there.

“Go and have your dinner, Charles. I’ll be along in a bit.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I said I’ll be along, I’m not some dog you can call—“

“Not that. You’re not better on your own. I refuse to believe it.”

“Well, if you refuse—“

“Do not make fun of me, Erik!” Charles yelled, startling them both—parting Erik’s thin lips. “Please,” Charles said, softly now. “It is what I feel. Don’t mock me for it.”

“I did not mean to mock you. Only to point out the futility.”

“You needn’t always be a martyr, Erik, it’s not becoming.”

“Please, Charles,” he said, his shark’s grin glowed in the rising dark, “there is nothing I can do to make you think I am not becoming.”

“Content yourself with spaghetti-ohs, then, I’m going inside.” Charles stalked away, and this time Erik didn’t stop him. He looked back only when he reached the east servant’s door, to see that dark silhouette, printed on his heart, standing stark against the horizon. He could not tell if Erik was looking at the house or away from it. Charles hardly knew which to hope for anymore.

 _This must be how others feel around me,_ Charles thought, a hot plume rising in his chest, somewhere in the valley between hope and despair. _But he doesn’t need protein chains and voices in his head to understand me; I hadn’t even confessed it to myself yet. It’s him. It’s just him._

_And I’ve been fooling myself all along._

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Clint Mansell's composition "Memories (Someone We'll Never Know)", from the score for "Moon".


End file.
